Who Cares

125

Chapter 125 Transformation
Guan Suyi covered her chest with one hand and pulled the hem of her skirt with the other, standing in front of the bronze mirror she hesitantly said, “Is it really okay to wear it like this? Would it be too indecent? Besides, it’s just spring, and the weather is still a bit cold, but I even put on thin muslin, I’m afraid I’ll be a laughingstock when I go out.”

Jinzi hesitated to speak, but Minglan waved her hands indifferently, “Miss, you are thinking too much, let alone spring, even in the mid-winter of the twelfth month, some people wear it like this. Just wear a fox fur coat outside, and when entering the inner room, you can take off the coat, it will definitely overwhelm the crowd. This is a trend brought by the eldest princess. The noble girls and noble ladies in Yanjing City are flocking to it. Every banquet will be full of fragrance clothes and shadow on the temple*, ice flesh and snow skin*, which makes people dazzled when they see. If you don’t wear it like this, you may even be scolded for being old-fashioned.”

“Oh? This dress has become popular in the capital?” Guan Suyi was surprised.

The Zhao family was inferior to the noble families, did not mingle with the upstart, and did not communicate with the low-level officials, so the position in the capital was very embarrassing. When Zhao Luli was deprived of the title, the situation became even worse, and Guan Suyi didn’t even have a chance to go out to a banquet. If she widely send out invitations to others to visit her, it was unlikely to get promised, and she seemed to be isolated. Therefore, after marrying into the Zhao Mansion in this life, she only spent her free time reading books and busily managing the family, and never paid attention to the changes in the outside world.

She still remember that at this time in her previous life, Second Miss Xu had entered the palace and was named Zhaoyi. Because of her outstanding talent and beauty, sincere and upright, she was quite favored by Emperor Sheng Yuan, and soon took charge of the authority of the Six Palaces. Later, she became famous for “Lesson for Women”, and then flew up the branches and turned into a phoenix, which attracted noble ladies in the capital to follow suit. Everyone took pride on being unwavering and had virtuous virtue.

The clothing style of the previous dynasties was originally more relaxed. In the early days of the establishment of the Wei Kingdom, it also adhered to the that tradition, the heroic and rambunctious characters of the Jiuli people were also dominant, and the lavish style prevailed for a while. But it was reversed under the preach of Second Miss Xu, and it became more conservative day by day. The commoners might not feel deeply, nor understood what “Xu’s Neo-Confucianism” means and how it affect their lives, but the upper circles bear the brunt of it, becoming distorted and grotesque.

The term “the top move, below follow” had been vividly interpreted. “The King of Chu has a slender waist, and many of them starve to death in the palace*.”, and the situation of the Wei Kingdom was also strikingly similar. The emperor only respected Confucianism, and all scholars abandoned what they had learned before and went to study Confucianism instead; the emperor advocated Neo-Confucianism, and the rotten, rigid and arbitrary patriarchal thought became popular; the emperor liked women who were faithful unto death, and reconciliation and remarriage became a disgrace and taboo. A transformation quietly took place in the upper-class circles, and in ten, twenty, thirty years… this trend would surely seep into the lower-class people, completely imprisoning their thoughts.

The women who were killed by “Xu’s Neo-Confucianism” were not only Guan Suyi and Li shi, but also many more. She closed her eyes and casually looked into her memory, and she could find frame after frame of bloody pictures. A woman who returned home after she reconciled was beaten to death; a woman who was disrespectful to her husband was arbitrarily abandoned and thrown into the river; there was even a little girl under the age of fourteen who was helped by a guard because she stumbled while walking, her hands were chopped off by her father who adhered strictly to Neo-Confucianism, just to keep her innocent.